April 30, 2013 AT 9:20 am

The First Web Page Returns to CERN

The world’s first web page, created 20 years ago by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has returned to it’s birthplace at CERN.

This is part of a project by CERN to recreate the earliest days of the Web. From the BBC:

According to Dan Noyes, the web manager for Cern’s communication group, re-creation of the world’s first website will enable future generations to explore, examine and think about how the web is changing modern life.

“I want my children to be able to understand the significance of this point in time: the web is already so ubiquitous – so, well, normal – that one risks failing to see how fundamentally it has changed,” he told BBC News

“We are in a unique moment where we can still switch on the first web server and experience it. We want to document and preserve that”.

The hope is that the restoration of the first web page and web site will serve as a reminder and inspiration of the web’s fundamental values.

At the heart of the original web is technology to decentralise control and make access to information freely available to all. It is this architecture that seems to imbue those that work with the web with a culture of free expression, a belief in universal access and a tendency toward decentralising information.